People-Listening

"Party Line,"...
Lawrence  Toney
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I love people-watching.  Even more, though, I love people-listening.  No, not eavesdropping.  Eavesdropping is when you are listening to someone secretly, when you shouldn’t be listening, like in the poster above.  But people-listening is the stuff of which great short stories are made.  Made, I tell you!

Now, I believe wholeheartedly that when people are having an audible conversation in a doctor’s waiting room, it’s because I’m invited to listen.  If they didn’t want anyone to hear, they would go outside.  And if I went to the door to listen to them secretly, that would be eavesdropping.

So, bearing all of that in mind, I share with you the following gem that I overheard in the waiting room of a doctor’s office this morning.  These ladies were sitting less than 10 feet from me.  They obviously wanted me to enjoy their lively conversation, and I did.  The very first sentence, which is pure poetry, drew me in.

Teenaged girl:  Some nasty boy put his fat foot in my flip flop and stretched it out.

Mama:  Tell that nasty boy he owes you $50.

Teenaged girl:  He don’t have $50.

Mama:  Send him to me.

Teenaged girl:  For real?

Mama:  Yep.  I’ll take that $50 outta his skin.  Who is he?

Teenaged girl:  Robert *****.  You know Betty *****?

Mama:  Yes.  She’s no longer living, though, is she?

Teenaged girl (laughing):  Yes, she is.  She’s Robert’s mother.

You’re welcome.  Have a nice day.

I love the south.

Hope in the Rubble

Oklahoma, Shirley...

18 in. x 24 in.
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There are few movies that give me as much joy and entertainment as this one.  I can't help but keep thinking of this movie as the pictures, videos, and stories come rolling in from yesterday's tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.  The destruction is unfathomable.  Those folks had no warning, no time to evacuate, as we do with hurricanes around these parts.

But in the rubble, hope rises.  The link below takes you to a video of a tornado survivor being interviewed on CBS.  It's is the first miracle I have seen to come out of this horrendous tragedy, and I’m sure there are thousands more.  It’s a miracle that this woman lived . . . and her dog, too!

Click here to be elated.

Want to help?  This is a wonderful organization that is already there, helping and healing.

Click here to help.

Write (or say) it the right way.

 

Button by MosquitoCreekGifts
Look at Grammar Buttons online at Zazzle.com

I'm not perfect.  I'm far from it, in fact.  However, I do have this passion for correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.  Again, I'm not even perfect in these areas.

I strive.  I try.  I'm fairly diligent in this area.  Sometimes, I fail.  But communication is so very, very important.  And sometimes, the snob in me comes out a bit.  I read an e-mail or a comment on Facebook, and I want to reply, "Do you speak English?"  I don't, of course.  I'm not that mean (usually).  But the deterioration of our language is destroying part of our culture.  When communication is compromised, errors are made.  Misunderstandings abound.  The decay of society becomes imminent.  In the confusing case of the difference between "bring" and "take," the solution appears to be the elimination of the word "take."  No matter whether someone is actually bringing or taking, they use "bring."  I hear some of the high school aged children talking to each other in public, and I'm concerned.

Just the other day, I was reading a comment thread on Facebook about a missing girl.  It turns out that she had run away from home.  One of her friends knew this, and wrote a comment indicating where she was and with whom she was staying.  

Another teen asked, "Isn't harvesting a runaway a felony?"  Um, no.  Now, harboring a runaway may, perhaps, be a felony.  I'm unaware of any laws related to harvesting one, though.  I've said flighty things like that before.  It can happen to anyone.  That's just a funny example of incorrect word usage.  It could have even been the fault of our new friend, Autocorrect.  Mm.  What a tricky fellow that one is.

What's not as funny to me is the blatant carelessness exhibited by Hollywood.  Children's television shows that are supposed to be educational often have a character who uses "realistic" but incorrect grammar.  While it may be the way a child already speaks, it's not something to be perpetuated or emulated when a cartoon character on a science show says, "Me and my mom went to the zoo."  aaarrgghhh!

A song sometimes played between shows on the Disney Channel talks about naptime.  In a dreamy voice, the lady sings, "It's time to lay down."  Is she a chicken?  Lay down the what?  The nap mat?  The knife?  It's not clear.  As a tiny toddler, my son knew the correct usage of "lie" and "lay."  The world has tried to confuse him.  Another Disney error:  a popular show about trains refers to a pack of diesel trains as "chuggers," and uses the catch phrase "Chugga chugga choo choo," which is a sound associated with steam engines.  I can't take credit for noticing that, though - my preschooler caught it.  Nice, Disney.  You're being corrected by a preschooler.  Get it together. I won't even address Mater from the Cars movies.

Thank goodness, my child has become increasingly bored with television.  But the rest of the world is insistent on "sloppifying" our beautiful language.  To borrow a few words from the poet Dylan Thomas, I will rage against the dying of the light.  I won't let the laziness of the world take me down without a fight.

Back Home on the Water

I grew up around salt water.  Fishing, crabbing, throwing a cast net, and feeling the salty spray in the bow of a boat were all part of my upbringing.  My family has been without a boat that we could all enjoy for nearly twenty years.  During these decades, life has interfered with its mandates and diversions, some joyful and some onerous.  While visions, smells, and sensations of brackish rivers were distant, they could be encouraged in my memory during quiet times of solitude and longing.  But now there is a new boat in the family, and I will no longer be reliant on that quiet longing.

This weekend, I returned to a home deep within myself.  This home is a hidden place that is only revealed when I am in the element of salt water, afloat and aware of God’s creation around me.  I was reminded of a teenage girl who was comfortable with adventure, who was cautious but unafraid.  Yeah.  I’m that girl.  I’m that girl who came face-to-face with a small shark attacking the bait on the end of my crab line.  I shook him off of the white piece of string and roared at him to find his chicken somewhere else.  I’m that girl who knew how to find schools of bait fish and fan a cast net out over them like nobody’s business.  I knew how to clean a crab, what the dead man’s fingers were, and what was good to eat.  I had a fierce step dancing contest with a feisty live crab on the kitchen floor once, too.  He did not want to go in that pot!  But he did, and we ate him.  I also navigated deep waters offshore with lines trolling behind, dodging sharks that competed for our dinner.  That girl was me.  I had lost touch with that girl over the years, like a childhood friend who moved away and never wrote.

My son got so excited when we saw porpoises in the water on Saturday.  This is only the beginning, I thought.  There are so many more amazing things to see.  This is my home, and now it is his.  When I pointed to the marsh to describe something in the pluff mud, he asked, “Mommy, what’s pluff mud?”  How could any child of mine not know what pluff mud is?  I used to jump out of the boat and squish into this stuff so I could catch fiddler crabs with my bare hands.  At least he’s learning now.

I re-enter an experience long forgotten but so much a part of who I am.  Heart wide open, face turned to the sky, and arms outstretched to praise God from whom all blessings flow, I thank Him for the beauty of His salt marshes and the profound solemnity teeming with life that is the ocean.  And I thank my dad, for bringing me up to love and respect this part of creation.  Now, I only pray that I can instill the same or greater appreciation in my son.

He told me that going on the boat was the “best thing that ever happened” to him, so we are off to a good start.

"Cool Change" by Little River Band

Don't Be Silent

Ever get fired up about something?  You know what I'm talking about.  A news story or a subject just grips you.  It seizes your thoughts or emotions, or both even.  You are passionate about it, and you want to grab the arm of every person you meet and say, "Let me tell you about this."

That's exactly how this story has affected me.  I pray all the time for Pastor Saeed Abedini.  

I don't usually "get all political" in this venue, but I feel this topic is above politics.  The facts are the facts.  And the facts are that our government has, up to now, failed one of its citizens miserably. They can still turn it around, though.

Pastor Saeed Abedini is an American citizen.  He was wrongfully arrested and convicted in his native Ir@n because of his Christian faith.  He is currently serving an 8 year term in one of Ir@n's most infamous, most brutal prisons.  Our government has not asked for his release.  They have done nothing to fight for him.  What message does this send?

He is tortured and beaten, while hundreds of thousands have signed a petition on his behalf.  His basic human rights are violated every day.

I cannot tell this story any better than it has already been told.  All I ask is that you go to this website:  http://savesaeed.org/ to read his story and sign the petition, then pass it on.

Don't be silent.  Tell everyone you know about this.  We will be heard.  Keep on speaking.  Keep on knocking.  And like the neighbor knocking in the night in Luke 11:5-10, we will receive what we ask.  I believe this.  I believe this man will be restored to his beautiful wife and his two young children who need their daddy.

Allendale is the New Radiator Springs

Quaint Buildings...
Walker  Evans
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(Preface:  This post was inspired by a special section in this past Sunday's Post & Courier newspaper.  Click HERE to see it.)

My grandmother grew up in a wonderful, thriving South Carolina town called Allendale.  I used to love the stories she would tell me from her childhood.  She drove herself to school in her mother’s car at age 12, because she could.  She enjoyed walking along the main street in town, having a cold Co-Cola at the drug store, and visiting friends.  She also got into all kinds of mischief, but that's for a different post.  Everyone knew each other, and it was a safe, happy place to live.

Then Interstate 95 was built.  Cutting through the middle of the state, it swept up all the travelers and traffic from surrounding counties (including Allendale) and redirected them in a straight, fast line that went up and down the east coast.  The streets of Allendale went quiet.  Slowly, but surely, most of the population got up and left for greener pastures.  Now, boarded storefronts, unemployment, and poverty are the trademarks of this once-lively town.  It’s heartbreaking.

If you have a child the right age, you have probably seen the Disney movie Cars.  If so, you know what Radiator Springs is.  It’s the town where most of the movie takes place, and it is situated on the old, abandoned Route 66.  It suffers the same fate as Allendale.  A new highway was built, and no one ever comes anymore.

By the end of the movie, famous race car Lightning McQueen decides to call Radiator Springs home.  Bringing his team there infuses the town with new life.  By the start of the sequel, Cars 2, we see that Radiator Springs is a thriving, bustling town again.

So, what will it take to turn things around for Allendale?  Who will be Allendale’s Lightning McQueen?  I submit that some brave souls ought to go in there and establish some type of manufacturing facility that will create jobs/income for the community.  

Simultaneously and more importantly, one must educate people on how to open and operate their own small businesses.  This will create more jobs, more commerce, more community pride, more life.  People will stay.  People will work their way out of poverty.  Allendale can come back.  There are hard-working people there; this fact is established.  Lots of them rise at four in the morning and take a chartered bus to Hilton Head, where the jobs are.  They endure 14 hour days to bring home a check.  They want to work.

Dr. Benjamin Carson knows that education will liberate a person, and I agree.  Statistics show that poverty and crime tend to go hand-in-hand with functional illiteracy.  Going a step beyond illiteracy, though, education can also mean you are teaching people a skill or trade.  It all must be ignited and maintained, however, by giving hope and encouragement.  If each person begins to believe and strive, saying, “I can do this.  Let it begin with me,” then it will happen.

I wish Allendale were unique, but it isn’t.  There are towns very similar across my state, and across the nation.  Each one of them needs a Lightning McQueen.  Would you go and be a dying town’s Lightning McQueen?  What do you think it would take to revive a town like Allendale?

And in review . . .

"Here it is—my...
David  Sipress
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I write articles on a little website called Squidoo.  Okay, it's not little.  It's fairly huge.  I really enjoy it, and I can write on a variety of topics.  I'm not locked in to one or two things.  I write as much as I like, or as little.  I'm my own boss, which I enjoy.  Along the way, I have written a few "book reviews."

I use this term loosely (hence the quotation marks), because I don't necessarily use all of the conventional,  professional guidelines for writing book reviews.  No one is hanging over my desk, demanding that I produce such-and-so article by 5pm.  Sometimes I skip some of the technical publishing info, because I know most of my Squidoo readers will read right across it without stopping, or not care about it.  Oh, I give them the title and the author, of course.  Genre makes it in there, usually.  If I pique their interest in the book, they are welcome to click in through one of the ads and buy it.  When there is a link to the actual book, it seems a waste of time to give people the Library of Congress control number.

I think back to some of my former English teachers, professors in college, and other intelligent literary types I have known.  I picture them shaking their heads at my sloppy work.  "Well, she didn't say a word about the book's organizational structure," I can hear one of them saying.  "She didn't even attempt to properly cite this.  Year, publisher, edition?" another one asks.  "This book's title isn't in italics!!" (Well, that last one is because I am still learning about html and struggling with being an "internet writer," not because I don't know any better.)

However, the internet is a strange, new animal.  When you have a link to the actual book on Amazon, I think that eliminates the need for the literary chemistry equation.  Don't you?

Squidoo pushes for good, quality content.  I try to oblige, as do other squids- er, writers.  I think we succeed, for the most part.  But it's very informal and folksy and conversational over there.  I like it, personally.  I've learned a good bit about a variety of topics including cooking, gardening, sewing, home decor, and more.

So without further ado, here are a few links to some of my recent "book reviews:"
Judge me, if you will.

Lunch at the Piccadilly by Clyde Edgerton

The Blessed Woman by Debbie Morris

The Fireman's Wife by Susan Farren